Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the 28-year-old democratic socialist who became an instant Democratic Party heroine by unseating party caucus chair Rep. Joe Crowley (D-NY) in Tuesday’s New York primary, is an anti-Israel radical.

Her victory is a further sign of the Democratic Party’s slide toward the extreme left – and toward the anti-Israel left in particular.

During her primary election, Ocasio-Cortez tweeted passionately about an alleged Israeli “massacre” of Palestinian “protesters” at the Gaza border, citing an Al Jazeera article.

But those killed at the Gaza border were not “protesters.” The vast majority – 50 of 62 – were members of Hamas, a terrorist organization devoted to the destruction of Israel and the murder of Jews.

They were not demonstrating against Israel. They were attempting to breach the border so they could carry out attacks against Israeli civilians.

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Mitt Romney hardly broke a sweat on his way to capturing the Republican nomination in Utah’s U.S. Senate race, according to unofficial results Tuesday, earning 73 percent of the vote. Romney’s opponent, state Rep. Mike Kennedy, R-Alpine, drew only about one of four votes counted by Tuesday night. Late-arriving by-mail ballots will continue to be tallied in coming days.

“Well, it looks like our team won the primary,” Romney said to a cheering crowd.

The Associated Press called the election for Romney at 8:24 p.m. and Romney and his wife, Ann, delivered brief remarks at 8:40 p.m. By 9 p.m., an hour after polls closed, the crowd was dissipating, leaving a core group of sign-waving supporters chanting “We want Mitt,” for the evening news cameras…

A British court granted Uber Technologies Inc. a probationary license to operate in London, a victory for the ride-hailing company as it attempts to resolve allegations of corporate misbehavior before its planned initial public offering next year.

Judge Emma Arbuthnot on Tuesday gave Uber a 15-month private-hire license to operate a car service in the British capital, after the company spent much of a two-day hearing admitting and apologizing for past misdeeds and promising that its corporate culture had changed.

Last September, Transport for London, the regulator, had refused to renew Uber’s license, citing a “lack of corporate responsibility.” It alleged Uber had misled it and courts about the functioning of its app, and avoided referring serious incidents, such as sexual assaults, to the police. Uber appealed the decision, and has been allowed to operate during that process.

Judge Arbuthnot said the 15-month license should give authorities enough time to determine whether the company was making good on its promise to better work with local governments…

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In a major legal and political defeat for big labor, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 Wednesday that state government workers cannot be forced to pay so-called “fair share” fees to support collective bargaining and other union activities.

The conservative majority said a union’s contract negotiations over pay and benefits were inextricably linked with its broader political activities, and concluded workers had a limited constitutional right not to underwrite such “speech.” The case specifically examined union fees paid by non-members.

“This procedure violates the First Amendment and cannot continue,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the majority opinion…

After kicking White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders out of her restaurant, Stephanie Wilkinson, has been forced to step down as Executive Director Main Street Lexington organization. Wilkinson is a co-owner of the Red Hen restaurant, and up until she kicked out Sanders, was well-respected in her community.

Her resignation came over email from the President of her local board who stated: “Considering the events of the past weekend, Stephanie felt it best that for the continued success of Main Street. Lexington, she should step aside.”

After kicking out Sanders, her restaurant received intense scrutiny, with even President Donald Trump chiming in.

This was obviously not good for business, and their reviews online proved that. It became so bad that the restaurant review site Yelp was forced to close down the Red Hen’s page in order to protect them from bad ratings…

Workers in two American industries that many economists had consigned to the dustbin of history saw some of the biggest gains in wages, bonuses, and benefits in the start of 2018.

The earnings of workers in the durable manufacturing sector rose 12.2 percent compared with the end of 2017, the largest gain of any of the 24 industries tracked by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). Incomes and benefits for these workers rose by more than $20 billion in the quarter.

The Trump tax cut, it turns out, was a boon to many of the regions that voted for Donald Trump in 2016. Bonuses paid by auto manufacturers in nine states were responsible for around one-fifth of the gain, according to data released by the BEA on Thursday.

“Earnings in durable manufacturing, which increased $20.7 billion dollars in the first quarter, was boosted by $4.3 billion dollars in profit sharing payments made by auto manufacturers to workers in nine states…

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South Carolina Republican Gov. Henry McMaster won the state’s runoff election Tuesday night, one night after President Donald Trump appeared at a rally for him echoing his staunch support for the current governor.

McMaster was forced into a runoff election after failing to receive enough votes in the June 12 Republican gubernatorial primary, despite an early endorsement from Trump. However, McMaster defeated businessman John Warren in the runoff election, earning 53.6 percent of the vote with 83.6 percent of precincts reporting, according to Politico.

The win comes one night after Trump traveled to West Columbia, South Carolina, to give a campaign speech for McMaster…

Many Swedes were horrified in early 2017 when U.S. President Donald Trump linked immigration to rising crime in Sweden, but an increasing number now agree with him.

Amid soaring crime rates, gang violence, complaints about education, and pregnant mothers even being turned away from maternity wards due to a lack of capacity, resentment in Sweden has built over the influx of more than 600,000 immigrants over the past five years.

And as Bloomberg reports, paying some of the world’s highest income-tax rates has been the cornerstone of Scandinavia’s social contract, with the political consensus in Sweden to save money for when the economy is less healthy.

Yet the country is showing strains all too familiar in other parts of Europe with nationalists gaining support and Swedes increasingly questioning the sustainability of their fabled cradle-to-grave welfare system…

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Defense Secretary Jim Mattis will make his first visit to China this week for talks with Chinese military leaders amid growing tensions over China’s militarization of islands in the South China Sea.

Mattis told reporters aboard an Air Force E-4B jet, a militarized Boeing 747, en route to northern Alaska that he plans to gauge China’s strategic approach to the United States during talks in Beijing.

Fighting will now take precedence over dealing with transitioning transgender troops, drug abuse and other issues as the Army seeks to overhaul its training regimen to hone its soldiers’ battlefield skills.

In a series of servicewide memorandums approved by Army Secretary Mark Esper and Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley and obtained by The Washington Times, service leaders are making optional previously mandatory training on issues such as transgender transition and drug abuse.

The move, Army leaders argue, is designed to relieve stress on the overburdened troop training regimen and refocus on soldiers’ ability to fight in combat.

“The Army’s regulations and policies that deal with training were pretty settled, and there were not a lot of detractors to it. It was all the other [training] requirements that we levied on ourselves, or we had levied from other places” that led to the increasingly cumbersome approach to combat readiness, said Col. John O’Grady, chief of the Army’s collective training division…

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A while back, San Franciso and Oakland brought a lawsuit against the nation’s largest oil companies claiming that they were somehow responsible for climate change and should pay for all the infrastructure required to combat it.

This was a popular measure on the left among the “keep it in the ground” crowd but didn’t look like a particularly productive use of their time.

It turns out that the courts agreed and the Associated Press reports that a judge has now dismissed the suit, saying that the executive and legislative branches of the government are best able to deal with such questions. (Really? Has this judge ever watched Congress in action? But I digress.)…

The Supreme Court in a 5-4 ruling on Tuesday upheld President Trump’s ban on nationals from five Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States.

In a majority opinion authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, the court said the president has broad discretion under immigration law to suspend the entry of aliens into the United States.

“The president lawfully exercised that discretion based on his findings – following a worldwide, multi-agency review – that entry of the covered aliens would be detrimental to the national interest,” Roberts wrote in the opinion.

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A “stand down” order given by James Comey to kill an imminent deal between the US Government and Julian Assange preceded the largest leak in CIA history, known as “Vault 7,” reports John Solomon of The Hill.

Assange was willing to redact the names of CIA employees, and also offered to provide technical evidence which would rule out “certain parties” (such as Russia) in the DNC email hack. In short, Comey killed advanced negotiations with the WikiLeaks founder that would have safeguarded the lives of CIA agents who are now at risk, while also providing key evidence in the ongoing Russia investigations. For the longer version, keep reading.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled 5-4 in favor of pro-life crisis pregnancy centers in California, holding, in an opinion written by Justice Clarence Thomas, that a California law forcing them to post information on where to obtain abortions violates the First Amendment.

Thomas’s opinion rejected the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit’s holding that these types of notices, required in the context of state licensing, were a separate category of “professional speech” that did not receive the full measure of the First Amendment’s free speech protections.

The ruling also prohibits California from forcing crisis pregnancy centers that are not licensed medical facilities to read clients a script that they are not licensed.

The law in question, California’s Reproductive Freedom, Accountability, Comprehensive Care, and Transparency Act (FACT Act) was passed in 2011 and the record indicates it was written specifically to burden pro-life center that the California legislature was displeased existed….

The lawsuit charges that Paul has “been deprived of his enjoyment of life.” It also asks to prevent Boucher from contacting the Paul family or Boucher “will continue… the pattern of stalking and harassment.”

A senior official at the Department of Homeland Security found a burned and decapitated animal carcass on the front porch of his D.C.-area home, according to a DHS official – an incident that occurred as employees of the agency are seeing an increase in violent threats due to the Trump administration’s immigration policy.

The agency sent a letter to all 250,000 employees Saturday stating “there may be a heightened threat against DHS employees” in response to the Trump administration’s zero tolerance immigration policy, a DHS official told the Washington Examiner.

Under the policy, all adult illegal border crossers are referred for criminal prosecution. The policy has caused roughly 2,300 immigrant children whose parents were apprehended at the border to be separated from their families.

“This assessment is based on specific and credible threats that have been levied against certain DHS employees and a sharp increase in the overall number of general threats against DHS employees…

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On Monday, the Food and Drug Administration approved the country’s first drug derived from marijuana.

The drug, GW Pharmaceuticals’ Epidiolex, treats two different forms of epilepsy, according to StatNews. Consisting of cannabidiol (CBD), which doesn’t elicit a high among users, it will be sold as an oil, and demonstrated its success in trails where it reduced seizures by 40% in patients with Dravet or Lennox-Gastaut syndromes.

FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb stated, “This approval serves as a reminder that advancing sound development programs that properly evaluate active ingredients contained in marijuana can lead to important medical therapies…

Iranian civilian protestors, in a surprising turn of events in the country, are taking to the streets to express opposition to the hardline ruling regime by chanting, “Death to Palestine” and “Leave Syria, think of us,” according to an independent translation of videos showing the protests.

The protests, just the latest in social unrest gripping the country, began over the weekend and have spilled into Monday, as anti-regime protestors express frustration over the plunging value of Iran’s currency, the rial, and Iranian leadership’s continued funding of regional terror groups and military operations in Syria on behalf of embattled President Bashar al-Assad.

Protestors are said to be fed up with the Iranian ruling regime’s focus on foreign intervention ahead of the country’s own economy, which has been even further strained since President Donald Trump walked away from the landmark nuclear agreement and reimposed harsh sanctions on Tehran…

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A mayor of an Ohio suburb got into a physical altercation with his husband, who happens to be the village’s maintenance supervisor, after a long day of partying at Cincinnati gay pride festivities, which included lots of alcohol, apparently.

Elmwood Place Mayor Bill Wilson and his husband, village maintenance supervisor Bill Smith, were both charged with domestic battery, as, according to local police, it was unclear who was the main aggressor. Both Wilson and Smith took a beating it seems, with Wilson catching a black eye and Smith boasting scratches on his face.

On their way home from a rowdy day of gay pride in downtown Cincinnati on Saturday, the couple apparently “got into an argument over who was ‘drunkest’…

Someone finally asked Obama administration officials to own up to the rise of ISIS and arming jihadists in Syria.

In a wide ranging interview titled “Confronting the Consequences of Obama’s Foreign Policy” The Intercept’s Mehdi Hasan put the question to Ben Rhodes, who served as longtime deputy national security adviser at the White House under Obama and is now promoting his newly published book, The World As It Is: Inside the Obama White House.

Rhodes has been described as being so trusted and close to Obama that he was “in the room” for almost every foreign policy decision of significance that Obama made during his eight years in office. While the Intercept interview is worth listening to in full, it’s the segment on Syria that caught our attention.

In spite of Rhodes trying to dance around the issue, he sheepishly answers in the affirmative when Mehdi Hasan asks the following question about supporting jihadists in Syria: